Alexei Shulgin & Natalie Bookchin’s “Introduction to net.art” serves as a self aware, tongue-in-cheek manifesto for the net.art scene of the 90’s. The central component of the work is its text – a simplified beginners guide to net.art, followed by DIY instructions on how one can become a net artist. Steps are listed such as “Preparing Your Environment”, followed by potential modes of working and genres one might adhere to for the production of successful net.art. Other sections include “What You Should Know”, “Critical Tips and Tricks for the Successful Modern net.artist”, and "Utopian Appendix (After net.art)". In 1999 this text was exhibited engraved in stone. This piece effectively embodies the transgressive, and humorously self-aware style of the 90’s net.art scene.

Dimensions variable.

About Alexei Shulgin & Natalie Bookchin

Alexei Shulgin and Natalie Bookchin, both former photographers who now work primarily with new media, became collaborators after meeting on the internet. Working in what Bookchin calls the “meta-medium”, or the net, the duo established Universal Page (2000), a webpage driven by an algorithm that analyzes web activities and produces an objective average of all web content. “I think that because the computer and the net are reshaping most aspects of our lives and redefining what it means to be alive today,” Bookchin has said, “it is crucial for artists and others to work in this space, to use it in unexpected and unintended ways.”